


Mourning for Dead Clams

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You with a Story or a Picture" [4]
Category: Point Break (1991)
Genre: BBW, Beaches, Childhood Memories, Day At The Beach, Donuts, F/M, First Dates, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, Insecurity, Kindness, Loss, Love Stories, Memories, Overweight, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Sunsets, Surfing, Sweet, Walks On The Beach, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-04-21 22:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22119940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: When Johnny Utah asks me to meet him at the Beach on the weekend, it brings up bad memories for the both of us. However, as we each deal with our remorse, the man gifts me with an act which helps me overcome a past regret.
Relationships: Johnny Utah & Bodhi, Johnny Utah/Me, Tyler Endicott/Johnny Utah
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You with a Story or a Picture" [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 6





	Mourning for Dead Clams

**Author's Note:**

> The fourth in my series of fics featuring Keanu Reeves characters and myself.
> 
> I don't know if there really is such a thing as a donut delivery girl. But if I got the chance to deliver donuts to Johnny Utah, I would definitely try out for the position. 
> 
> Even if, once again, I'd be tempted to sample the merchandise. :/

"_I don't like the beach_."

That is my first thought when Johnny Utah asks me to meet him there on Sunday.

I've been delivering donuts to his office at the F.B.I. building for a few months now. Your friendly area Donut Delivery girl, that's me. Make that your _pudgy_ friendly area Donut Delivery girl. Whenever they place the order, I am there to deliver over the fresh baked goodness in the requested flavors. Not usually a normal service for where I work but my boss insists that I do it because they are the F.B.I. afterall. He thinks he'll be audited if we don't and I want to tell him that's the I.R.S. but I'm too shy to.

Besides, I _like_ making deliveries to the station because Johnny Utah is there. 

Johnny is one of the agents. He can be a little cocky and sure of himself but he's always kind and he doesn't exactly hurt the eyes to look at. He's tall, dark-haired and dark eyed. He's kind of boyish and sweet and I like when he's there and not working on a case so I can see him. These days he's usually working behind a desk so I'm selfishly pleased that I bump into him everyday now.

And the oddest and most wonderful thing is that I think he looks forward to seeing me too.

Even though I'm a big girl, some guys have been interested in me. You can tell because of how they look at you suddenly for the most part and this other thing that is indescribable yet exists, like when you know it's about to rain. It always surprises me when it happens because I don't know why they would like someone like me. I'm even more taken off guard when Johnny Utah looks at me like that because I like him back.

I can't believe it but Johnny Utah actually _likes_ me.

Or maybe it's just the donuts, I'd think sometimes, reminding myself not to be _too_ hopeful.

However, today when I dropped off the box of goodies,I found out that it wasn't just the donuts he fancies, after all.

"Hi Erin," he said as I shyly gave him the delivery.

He peered inside the box as he always does, as if this is his favorite part these days of being an agent. Then he frowned for a moment and looked up at me. "There aren't any honey dipped. Did you eat 'em all?"

My first thought was that it was a jibe at my weight. Ha ha. Fat girl can't stop herself. Hardy har har. I felt the familiar jolt course through me whenever I heard something that hurts. Then my eyes were stinging and I was starting to walk away.

"Hey," I hear him call out and before I knew it, his hand was on my shoulder and he was behind me, pulling me back and spinning me around to face him.

"Look, I didn't," he started to say and then muttered, "Hell, it's crowded in here," before he dragged me into an empty office.

He faced me then, tears rolling down my cheeks at that point, and suddenly looked very angry at himself. "Look, I'm a dork, okay. I never meant...well I never meant it about your weight. If Kate Moss had delivered that exact box of donuts I would have said the same thing."

"Really?" I asked with a sniffle.

"Cross my heart," he said and did the full out accompanying gesture for it.

We stood alone together in semi-awkward silence in the office before he said, "I haven't been around somebody I like in ages so I'm not very good at it and I stuck my foot in my mouth when I should have stuck a cruller."

"How long?" I had asked.

"Three years," Johnny replied. "I try to be 100% truthful these days. It ended because I hadn't been before. Well, actually it ended because I spent more time chasing her ex boyfriend than I did her."

I'm pretty sure I furrowed my brow in confusion over that one.

"That's not what it sounds like," he had stated, raising his hands. "I was..."

Suddenly the door opened and a man with a face that looked so joyless and stony it belonged on the top of a church, warding off evil spirits, stood in the doorway.

"Utah," the F.B.I. gargoyle shouted. "Get your ass out here pronto."

Johnny made a sound of frustration and then turned to me. "Give me half a chance later to explain that last bit so it doesn't sound so gay?" he pleaded.

"Okay," I reply.

A happy smile spread across his face and that's when he told me to meet him at the beach this Sunday at one o'clock.

And how we ended up here and now where I nodded my head in agreement like some idiot all the while thinking,

"_I don't like the beach_."

* * *

When I get there, the place is crowded and I curse myself for agreeing to this. My AVPD is cursing me too. I wanted to see Johnny, though, and explaining himself seemed so darn important to him. Far more important than me needing to hear it. I could tell from his embarrassment that it wasn't what it had accidentally sounded like, though, so it wasn't really necessary. I just wanted to finally go out with Mr. Johnny Utah.

My donut loving friend finds me soon enough. He's carrying a surfboard with him and he looks at my beach gear in amusement.

"You're going to bake in that," he comments.

He's probably right. I have decided to wear a royal blue one piece but this is successfully hidden by a very large black t-shirt, with Spike Speigel on it, which hangs down to my knees. I inform him about my bathing suit underneath it and he playfully grabs the bottom of the shirt, pretending to lift it up to take a peek.

I guess, my blush stops him, though and he looks repentant. "If you get too hot take it off okay?"

"The T-shirt or the bathing suit?" I ask.

He smiles widely. "The first. It's not that type of a beach for the second."

We walk for a while on the sand and I enjoy watching him carrying the board; he looks at home here and I feel comfortable with him. "The suit I have on reminds me of the one I had as a kid," I start to say. "I was always big so it was an adult's suit. I've never been thin...well when I was a toddler but that was the end of that."

"Well you're pretty," he compliments me and I start to blush again.

"Thanks," I say as I brush away a strand of brown hair from my face. "So which was prettier: your old girlfriend or her ex?" I ask.

"Ha ha," he says instead of outright laughing. 

He proceeds to tell me about his girlfriend, Tyler, and this guy named Bodhi. It seems that Bodhi was part of this surfing team which were also bank robbers.

And sky divers.

I don't know how this makes any rational sense but I go with it. If he tells me that their phone numbers started with three fives than I will fully give in to any doubt.

Johnny lied to Tyler to get close to the surfing crowd. Bodhi ended up being guilty but when he escaped, Johnny Utah chased him all across the world out of pride and a need for vengeance. When he finally met with his quarry, he let the man escape to die in one last monstrous wave.

By the time he had returned, Tyler had caught her own big wave straight out of his life.

"She got tired of waiting," Utah states a little sadly and with a tinge of bemusement.

I don't believe her leaving bothered him as much as Bodhi's death. And the whole reason lies in those two very different concepts: when someone breaks up with you, you can comfort yourself that they still are breathing somewhere beneath a sky of blue or clouds; when someone dies you are left wondering exactly where they are.

In Johnny's case, he was also left feeling responsible for it too.

I sigh for him and then look around the overcrowded beach. My anxiety must have been evident for he leaned lower and whispered conspiratorially, "You aren't comfortable here are you?"

"Not much," I reply and then finally tell him, "I don't like the beach."

"Want to leave?" he offers to which I shake my head.

"And have made you lug that surfboard around for nothing?" I balk.

"Well how about I take you somewhere more quiet?"

He holds out the hand that isn't wrapped around the board and I take it, letting him lead me where he pleases.

* * *

We are sitting on the sand of a much quieter and peaceful area of Zuma Beach. Johnny's surfboard is lying close nearby as we sit and stare out at the water. "I like to look at it," I confess. "But it scares me. That's odd since my sun is in Pisces, my moon in Cancer and my ascendant is Scorpio: all three water signs. Maybe that's why I was a waterlogged baby. I was practically born blue."

Johnny makes a show of studying the exposed areas of my skin. "You're a much healthier shade now," he remarks.

I smile at him. "I almost drowned during swimming lessons at school. A boy pushed me down as he was going past me. I went down but after a bit managed to push myself up back to the surface with one finger. When I went back to where all the other kids were and the teacher, they hadn't even noticed I was gone. I never bothered to tell them either."

We look out across the water some more in silence. "That was a pool; why don't you like beaches then?"

I stick my fingers in the sand and act like I'm digging. I like Johnny Utah so I think I can tell him why.

"When I was a little girl...well, as I said, I was never really little... I went to the beach with my crush's family. His name was Jordan and I loved him more than I can say. We came from very different types of families. Jordan's father was wealthy, respected and well groomed; my dad once opened the door in his underwear to my kindergarten teacher's husband and would watch porn while his own mother was sitting in the same room. Jordan's mom was was friends with mine, though. So when they went to the beach at the end of one summer, they invited my mom, my sister and I to go along.

"I was so happy...but then I started to feel insecure about my weight and everything. I was on my own digging in the sand where the water meets it. I was collecting clamshells. Empty ones. Only one wasn't empty. It spat at me when I tried to open it. My feelings were hurt and I smashed it. 

"Later all of us kids gathered; there was Jordan, his little brother and my sister. Jordan's father had brought a sailboard and they wanted to ride it...only I was too scared to. I couldn't get up on it and I was too big so I just pushed the three of them around on it in the water.

"I...I was struggling...it was hard. What made it worse was that I felt more than ever that I didn't belong. I saw everybody else but I wasn't up there with them. When I was pushing the board near the shore, I saw Jordan's parents sitting and talking with my mom. His dad was shouting at me and I thought maybe they would help me out and see my pai but...he was just telling me not to get his sailboard too close to the beach and damage it.

"I wanted to die because, not only was I not on the stupid thing, I had made Jordan's dad mad at me in front of him. I was so embarrassed and I just felt...just _knew_ that I wasn't good enough to be on that board with Jordan...with anybody."

Johnny who has been staring at me, leans in close to my face and kisses it as tears run down my cheeks. "What bothers me most about that day," I continue as he rests his face against the side of my wet marked cheek. "What I feel really bad about isn't the incident with the board, though...it's the death of the clam. It didn't know any better...it _thought_ I would hurt it so it was trying to save itself. And then I just confirmed all of its fears by killing it; I was as bad as it thought I would be.

"Sometimes, I think of it for no reason. I see clearly its broken shell and I still feel the guilt that I did when I realized what I had done."

Johnny takes my face in his hands and I touch his fingers gently with my own, still feeling that shame but grateful to have someone whom understands it and doesn't condemn.

* * *

Later I sit on the beach and watch as Johnny Utah surfs. He is as graceful on the water as he is on land. I know that Bodhi helped him achieve that and I know that the dead surfing, sky-diving, bank robber is Johnny's clam. He is the regret he remembers every now and then for no other reason than that he will not forget to make himself pay for what he considers his greatest sin. 

But maybe the greater sin would be to not remember at all.

"Come out and join me!" Johnny calls from the water as he stands by his surfboard.

"I can't swim," I call back.

"It's not that far and I'll be right here with you!" he promises.

Summoning what little courage and strength I possess, I go out to him. Once I am standing before him, he shocks me by putting his hands on my waist and lifting me on to his board. I smile in joy as I look down at the man. I am finally on a board so many years later and I have Johnny Utah to thank for it. He looks up at me, his hands still on my middle and I place my arms around his neck. Before I know it we are leaning in towards each other and sharing our first kiss.

With bright smiles and a laugh or two, Johnny begins to push me on the board.

After a bit, I turn to look at him. "Hey! This is no good without you up here with me!"

Without further ado, the F.B.I. agent acquiesces. He jumps up, straddles the board and hugs me tightly from behind as he starts to propel the beautiful board now carrying the two of us forward towards the sunset.

**Author's Note:**

> Like any story in this series, any memories or thoughts I have are real. Jordan, the sailboard and the clam all really happened.
> 
> And I do still feel sorry about it.
> 
> What happened with Jordan much later was far worse but I won't ever tell that story. Only to Keanu Reeves if I ever meet him and he wants to hear because he figures into that one in a strange offhanded way and I want to thank him if I ever get the chance to.


End file.
